Cast In Fury

Severn caught her arm and said “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

She winced. “That obvious?”

“You don’t generally care about your boots, no.”

“I just—Marcus hates it when I go to the Palace. I swear he sits by his damn mirror waiting to hear that I’ve been thrown in the dungeons or eaten or something.”

They started to walk down the hall, and Sanabalis took the lead.

“You aren’t reporting directly to the Emperor,” Severn replied. “So it’s unlikely that anyone you offend will have you eaten.”

“You’re sure?”

“Unless the Emperor’s decided that you really are a threat to his Empire, in which case he could dispense with the petty part of you actually annoying some high-ranking official, and go straight to the eating. He’s an Emperor. He doesn’t have to worry about the niceties of the Law.”

She squared her shoulders. Smiled at Severn. “I know I’m going to have to learn how to do this—how to talk with people who’ve never even approached the banks of the Ablayne. But I’m not good at lying. I’m not good at talking.”

“You talk all the time,” he said, with just the hint of a smile. He was already moving out of the way before she hit him.

“I talk to people who know more or less what I know, and who don’t bloody care if I say things nicely or not. I hate the idea that my career is riding on my ability to be someone else’s idea of polite.”

“I would dislike it as well,” Sanabalis said, with a hint of the same smile Severn had offered. “But if it’s of comfort, Kaylin, you will not feel this way in twenty years.”

She bit her tongue. Hard.

And he nodded in approval.

This was going to be a long assignment.

On the way to the Palace, she read as much of the play as she could. She’d seen some street theater in her time, but her entire familiarity with plays put on for an audience involved a lot of loud children and the Foundling Halls’ small stage. Marrin, the Leontine who guarded and raised the orphans in said Hall, had put aside one of the large rooms in the former manor for just that purpose. For most of the year it stood empty, but during Festival season, and at odd intervals throughout the year, the cloths were dragged off the various bits and pieces of furniture—and the paintings and candelabras—and the room was opened to the visiting actors.

Kaylin had been there for almost all of the plays that occurred at any time other than Festival; Marrin often called her in to help supervise. She didn’t always get the play—and some of the stories, which were clearly meant to be familiar to small children before they watched the play, were a mystery to her—but the men and women in their funny hats and wigs and makeup were universally friendly and warm. The kids loved plays; they would watch in near silence—near being as much as anyone sane could hope for—and laugh or scream at all the right lines.

Kaylin seriously hoped that this play wasn’t meant for those children, because they would have been bored to tears. And bored children were a special hell of their own.

As near as she could tell, Mr. Rennick had decided that a budding romance between two Tha’alani teens was a good idea—for reasons that made no sense to Kaylin. Having seen evidence of the Tha’alani concept of romance, Kaylin had no doubt at all that this would be first on the list of things that Ybelline had attempted to correct. Second on that list would be the disapproving parents. Third on that list would be the couple attempting to sneak off somewhere together so they could be alone.

She stopped herself from dumping the play out the window, and only partly because the Swords on the streets were in a bad enough mood they might stop even an Imperial Carriage and attempt to hand someone a ticket for littering.

“Does this ever get to the point?”

“Hmm?”

“I mean, does he even get to the docks and the damn tidal wave?”

“Well, yes—but the love story is meant to convey to the audience that the Tha’alani are as human as we are. And misunderstood love occurs in all species.”

“It does?”

“Well, in Mr. Rennick’s mind, yes. But I would say that he is not entirely wrong.”

“Oh. What does a Dragon romance look like?” she asked.

Sanabalis snorted. Kaylin swore she saw a small plume of fire erupt just above his beard. Which seemed to constitute his answer on that front, and Kaylin couldn’t offhand recall mention of a female Dragon at court. She was certain they must exist somewhere.

She wondered, briefly, what a Barrani romance looked like, and decided she probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between that and one of their assassination attempts. Instead, she said, “Look, the Tha’alani are like the rest of us. Sort of. But this whole romance—it’s just wrong. I think Ybelline would find the … the possessive-ness, the sense of—”

“Ownership?”

“Don’t mock me, Sanabalis. What I’m trying to say is that they don’t experience love that way.”

“Which is not, in fact, what you did say.”

“Fine. The point is, they don’t. They don’t have the disapproving parents thing, and they definitely don’t sneak off for privacy.”

“Ah. Well, then, how would you structure a play in which it was utterly essential that the audience empathize with the Tha’alani?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I’d write about the years in which they were tortured like criminals because they wouldn’t serve the Emperor by reading other people’s minds for him. Because they couldn’t, without going insane, and driving everyone they knew and loved insane in the process.”

Sanabalis’s eyes shaded to orange. In Dragon eyes, this meant irritation. Red was anger, and in general, if you saw red Dragon eyes, it was probably the last thing you would ever see.

“Kaylin,” Severn said.

“It would work,” she told him, an edge to the words. “People could sympathize with that.”

“I believe it would cast the Emperor in an unflattering light.”

She said nothing. Loudly. But it didn’t last. “I’m sorry, Sanabalis.”

“Generally one apologizes for behavior one means to curb,” he replied stiffly. But his eyes shaded back to burnished gold.

“It worked for me,” she told him quietly. “Knowing that—knowing what they suffered—it changed the way I felt about them. Look—I understand why people are afraid of the Tha’alani. I know why I was. It never occurred to me that they wanted to be left alone. That they never ever wanted to read our minds. And the experiments conducted on the Tha’alani—it changed the way I felt about them. Forever.”

He nodded. “You understand, however, why that information could not be part of a public entertainment.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s just that it would work, that’s all.” She looked at Severn. “Did you ever fear them?”

“Yes. But my understanding of the Tha’alani was different.”

She had the grace to say, “You wanted to understand them.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to hide from them.”

He nodded again. “It’s natural. Kaylin, I’m five years older than you are. Five years ago—”

“It’s not your age,” she said, swatting the words away. Willing to be this truthful. “It’s you.”

“Perhaps. But I have often found understanding my enemies gives me an edge when confronting them.” He paused and then added, “The first Tha’alani I met was Ybelline herself.”

“You met her first?”

“I was under consideration for the Shadows,” he told her. “Ybelline could read everything of note, and still remain detached. There are very few others who could. She was summoned. And it is very, very hard to fear Ybelline.”

Kaylin smiled at this. It was a small smile, but it acknowledged the truth: it was hard to fear her. Even though she could ferret all truth, all secrets, from a human mind. Because in spite of it, one had the sense that Ybelline could know everything and like you anyway.

Maybe that was something they could work with.

CHAPTER 2

Kaylin’s first impression of Richard Rennick could be summed up in two words: Oh, god.

She wasn’t fussy about which god, either. She was pretty sure she couldn’t name half of the ones that figured in official religions, and of the half she could name, the spelling or accents would be off. One of the things that living in the fiefs taught you was that it didn’t particularly matter which god you prayed to—none of them listened, anyway.

Rennick looked like an Arcanist might look if he had been kept from sleep for a week, and kept from the other amenities that came with sleep—like, say, shaving utensils—for at least as long, if not longer. His hair made her hair look tidy. It wasn’t long, but it couldn’t be called short either, and it seemed to fray every which way the light caught it. He didn’t have a beard, and he didn’t have much of a chin, either. It was buried beneath what might, in a few long weeks, be a beard—but messier.

His clothing, on the other hand, was very expensive and had it been on any other person, would have gone past the border of ostentatious; on him it looked lived in. She thought he might be forty. Or thirty. It was hard to tell.

What wasn’t hard to tell: he was having a bad day. And he wasn’t averse to sharing.

He didn’t have manners, either. When Sanabalis entered the room, he looked up from his desk—well, from the very, very long dining table at which he was seated—and grunted in annoyance.

The table itself was what one would expect in the Palace—it was dark, large, obviously well oiled. But the surface was covered in bits and pieces of paper, some of it crumpled in balls that had obviously been thrown some distance. Not all of those were on the table; the carpets had their fair share too.

“Mr. Rennick,” Lord Sanabalis said, bowing. “Forgive me for intruding.”

Another grunt. Sanabalis didn’t even blink an eye.

“I would like to introduce you to Corporal Handred and Private Neya. These are the people Ybelline Rabon’alani spoke of when we last discussed the importance of your work.”

He looked up at that, and managed to lose some slouch. “I hope you last longer than my previous assistants.”

“You had other assistants for this?”

“Oh, not for this project. In general, the office of Official Imperial Playwright comes with assistants.” The sneer that he put in the words managed to remain off his face. Barely.

“They won’t, however, allow me to hire my own assistants, and the ones they’ve sent me must have been dredged from the bottom of the filing pool.”

Kaylin gave Sanabalis what she hoped was a smile. She moved her lips in the right direction.

“We don’t intend to interfere in any way,” she began.

“Oh, please. Take a number and stand in line. If you somehow—by some small miracle—manage not to interfere, you’ll be the only people in this godsforsaken Palace who haven’t tried to tell me how to do my job.”

Sanabalis offered Kaylin a smile that was at least as genuine as hers had been.

On the other hand, if the Emperor hadn’t eaten Rennick, things obviously weren’t as formal as all that, and Kaylin felt a surprisingly strong relief; she was almost happy to have met him. Or would have been, if it were all in the past.

“This is not like filing,” he added, clearly warming up. He even vacated his seat and shoved his hands into pockets that lined the seams of his robes. “This is not an exact bloody science. Do you have any idea what they’ve asked of me?”

She had a fairly good idea, but said, “No.”

Something in her tone caused his eyes to narrow and Severn’s foot to stray slightly closer to hers. But she offered what she hoped was a sympathetic grimace; it was all she was up for.

“No, you probably don’t. But I’ll tell you.”

Of this, no one could be in any doubt.

“They want me to write a play that makes the Tha’alani human.”

There was certainly a sneer in his expression now, and Kaylin had to actively work to keep her hands from becoming fists. You’ve said worse, she told herself. You’ve said a lot worse.

Yes, she added, but he’s never going to go through what you did to change your bloody mind. Because she was used to arguing with herself, she then thought, And we’re going to have to do what experience won’t. Oh, god.

“I am willing to face a challenge,” he added. “Even one as difficult as this—but the Tha’alani themselves don’t seem to understand the purpose of the play I did write. They said it wasn’t true. I told them I wanted a bigger truth. It wasn’t real, but truth isn’t always arrived at by the real.”

“I can see how that would confuse them,” she offered.

“And now they’ve sent you. Have you ever even seen one of my plays?”

“I haven’t seen a play that wasn’t written for children,” she replied.

This didn’t seem to surprise him. He seemed to expect it.

Severn, however, said, “I have.”

“Oh, really?” A voice shouldn’t have legally been able to contain that much sarcasm. And, Kaylin thought, a person shouldn’t be subject to as much sarcasm as this twice in a single day. “Which one?”

“Winter,” Severn replied.

Rennick opened his mouth, but for the moment, he seemed to have run out of words. His eyes widened, his jaw closed, and his lips turned up in a genuine smile. Thirty, Kaylin thought. Or maybe even younger. “That was my second play—I wrote it before I won the seat.” He paused, and then his eyes narrowed. “Where did you see it?”

“It was staged in the Forum,” Severn replied, without missing a beat. “Constance Dargo directed it. I believe the actress who played the role of Lament was—”

“Trudy.”

“Gertrude Ellen.”

“That would be Trudy.” His eyes, however, had lost some of their suspicion. “She could be such a bitch. But she made a number of good points about some of the dialogue.”

“The dialogue was changed?”

“Good god, yes. Dialogue on the page is always stiffer than spoken dialogue—you can’t get a real sense of what it sounds like until actors put it through its paces. The first staging of any play defines the play. What did you think of it?”

“I thought it very interesting, especially given where it played, and when. It was also unusual in that it didn’t feature a relationship as its central motivation.”

“Starving people seldom have the time to worry about social niceties.”

Severn glanced at Kaylin.

“But you might be the first person sent me who’s actually familiar with my work,” Rennick said, picking up the reins where he had dropped them.

“And as one such person, I have no intention of guiding your work. You know it. I don’t.”

“And let me tell you—you don’t … Oh.”

“But the Emperor’s dictates are clear,” Severn continued, into the very welcome silence. “Winter was a work that reached out to people who had everything and reminded them, for a moment, of the fate of the rest of the city. You were chosen to write this for a reason.”

“I was chosen because they don’t have to pay me more.”

At that, Kaylin did chuckle. Rennick actually looked in her direction, but the hostility had ebbed. Slightly. As far as Rennick seemed to be concerned, Dragons didn’t exist, and he didn’t bother to glance at Sanabalis.

Kaylin did. The Dragon’s eyes were a placid gold. Clearly, he had met Rennick before, and for some reason, he had decided not to kill him then.

“Look,” Rennick added, running his hands through his hair as if he would like to pull it all out by its roots, “Winter wasn’t meant to be a message. It wasn’t meant to tell the audience anything about the state of the poor or the starving. I loved Lament—I wanted to tell her story in a way that would move people. Talia Korvick was the first Lament—I’ll grant that Trudy did a better job, but Trudy wouldn’t touch my unknown little play for its first staging.”

The idea that Rennick cared about moving anyone in a way that didn’t mean out of my sight surprised Kaylin. Almost as much as the fact that he would admit it.

“You achieved that—but you also made people think about what her life entailed, and how her life might have been different.”

“Yes—but that was incidental. I don’t know how to make people think differently. And the Emperor appears to want me to … to educate people. With characters that are in no way my own creations. It’s dishonest,” he added.

Given that he told lies for a living, this struck Kaylin as funny. Sanabalis, however, stepped on her foot.

“Lament wasn’t a real person but you made her real. The Tha’alani are real in the same way that the rest of us are—and Lament was human.” Severn frowned slightly, his thinking expression. “Have you been out in the streets since the storm?”

Rennick frowned. “Not far, no.”

“People are afraid. Frightened people are often ugly people. The Tha’alani—”

“From all reports, they tried to kill us.”

Kaylin didn’t care at that moment if Sanabalis stepped on her foot and broke it. “By standing in the way of the tidal wave? They would have been the first people hit by the damn thing!”

Rennick actually looked at her, possibly for the first time. After a moment, he said, “There is that.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard, and I don’t bloody care—they tried to save the city. And if this is what they get for trying to save it, they should have just let it drown.”

“And you know this how?”

“I was there—” She shut her mouth. Loudly. “I’m the cultural expert,” she told him instead.

“You were there?”

“She was not,” Sanabalis said, speaking in his deep rumble. “But she is a friend of the Tha’alani, and as much as anyone who was not born Tha’alani can, she now understands them. Mr. Rennick, I am aware that you find the current assignment somewhat stressful—”

“The Imperial Playwright writes his own work,” Rennick snapped. “This is—this is political propaganda.”

“But what you write, and what you stage—provided any of the directors available meet your rather strict criteria—will influence the city for decades to come. It is necessary work, even if you find it distasteful.”

“In other words,” Kaylin added sweetly, “The Emperor doesn’t care what you think.”

Severn glanced at Kaylin, and his expression cleared. Whatever he had been balancing in the back of his mind had settled into a decision. “With your leave, Lord Sanabalis, we have duties elsewhere.”

“What?” Rennick glared at Severn. “You definitely haven’t outlasted the previous assistants.”

“Our presence has been requested by the castelord of the Tha’alani,” he continued, ignoring Rennick—which might, to Kaylin’s mind, be the best policy. “And if you think it would be of help to you, you may accompany us.”

Hard to believe that only a few weeks ago, Kaylin would have skirted this Quarter of the town as if it had the plague. Fear made things big; her mental map of the Tha’alani district had been a huge, gray shadow that would, luck willing, remain completely in the dark.

Now, it seemed small. It had one large gate, and way too few guards—usually one—between it and the rest of the city. The only people who left the Quarter for much of anything were the Tha’alani seconded to the Imperial Service—and like many, many people in Elantra, they hated their jobs. Of course they did their jobs to prevent the Emperor from turning their race into small piles of ash, but they didn’t make this a big public complaint.

And they still liked the Hawks. Kaylin privately thought that was crazy—in their situation, she wouldn’t have.

Lord Sanabalis had arranged for a carriage, but he had not chosen to accompany them to the Quarter. This was probably for the best, as a Dragon wandering the streets could make anyone who noticed him nervous. On the other hand, people were already nervous, and if they wanted to take it out on something, Kaylin privately had a preference for something that could fight back, although she conceded that this was a fief definition of the word “fight.”

Rennick was silent for the most part, which came as a bit of a shock. He stuck his head out the window once or twice when something caught his eye, and he frequently stuck his arm out as if writing on air, but Severn said nothing; clearly Rennick was not of a station where babysitting was considered part of their duties.

But he pulled both arm and head into the carriage when they at last began the drive up Poynter’s road, because even Rennick could tell that the bodies on this particular street were on the wrong side of “tense.” They were like little murders waiting to happen.

“Don’t they have anything better to do?” she muttered to Severn.

He said nothing.

It was Rennick who said, “Probably not. They don’t want the Tha’alani to leave the Quarter, and they’re making sure that they don’t. Hey! That man has a crossbow!”

Kaylin had seen it. The fact that it was still in his hands implied that the Swords had far more work than they should have, and it troubled her. But not enough that she wanted to stop the carriage, get down and start a fight.

Because it would be a fight, and it would probably get messy.

“They’re frightened,” she said, surprising herself.

“Funny how frightened people can be damn scary,” Rennick replied. But he looked thoughtful, not worried.

“How many?” Kaylin asked Severn.

“A hundred and fifty, maybe. Some of them are in the upper windows along the street. I imagine that the Tha’alani who serve the Emperor are being heavily escorted.”

“Or given a vacation.”

He nodded.

“Has there been any official word about the incident?” Rennick asked quietly.

Kaylin shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“Right up until one of those idiots fires his crossbow or swings his—is that a pickax?” Severn nodded. “Swings his ax,” she continued, “it’s not Hawk business. It’s Sword, and the Swords are here.”

And they were. Kaylin had thought they’d send twenty men out; she was wrong by almost an order of magnitude. She thought there were maybe two hundred in total—no wonder the Halls of Law were so damn quiet.

But while they lined the street, they hadn’t built an official barricade, they did meet the carriage in the road, well away from the gatehouse, and they did tell the driver to step down. They also opened the doors, and Kaylin made sure she tumbled out first.

“Private Neya?” said the man who had delivered the curt instructions. He was older than Kaylin by about fifteen years, and the day seemed to have added about a hundred new wrinkles, and a layer of gray to his skin, but she recognized him. “Max—Uh, Sergeant,” she added, as he looked pointedly over her soldier. “Sergeant Voone. You’re out here?”

Max wasn’t retired, exactly, but he spent a lot of his time behind a desk. He appeared to like it a great deal more than Marcus—but a corpse would have given that impression as well. And Max looked tired.

“Most of us are, as you put it, out here. I know why we’re here—what are you doing in a fancy box?”

“Oh. Uh, we were sent here.”

“By?”

“Lord Sanabalis.”

He whistled. “To do what?”

“Not to step all over your toes, relax.”

His chuckle was entirely mirthless. “We’ll relax when these people remember they have jobs and family.”

“I’m thinking they remember the family part,” Kaylin replied. “People go crazy when they think they’re protecting their own.”

“Tell me about it. No, strike that. Don’t.”

“When did it get this bad?”

“There was an incident two days ago.”

“Incident?”